Discourse that allows us to express a wide range of ideas, opinions, and analysis that can be used as an opportunity to critically examine and observe what our experience means to us beyond the given social/cultural contexts and norms that are provided us.

Saturday, March 1, 2014

THE NATIONAL RACIST WAR ON BLACK STUDENTS IN AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES AND THE NECESSITY OF FIGHTING BACK!

WATCH: Black Students At UCLA Law Feel Like They're In Another Country:

Video Shines Light On The 'Disturbing Emotional Toll' Of Being Black At UCLA Law School

by Rhonesha ByngFeb 10, 2014The Huffington Post

On February 10, 2014 a group of students from the UCLA school of Law gathered together to raise awareness of the disturbing emotional toll placed upon students of color due to their alarmingly low representation within the student body.

In an emotional video released earlier this week, students at the UCLA School of Law gathered to share their stories of being among the few black students on campus as part of an awareness campaign simply titled "33."

According to the video, out of roughly 1,100 students, 33 of them are black, that's three percent of the school's student population. Official statistics reveal there are a total of 994 students enrolled getting their Juris Doctor, however, an official from the school says the video's 1,100 figure likely includes students receiving their LL.M. (Master of Laws).

“I am so tired of being on this campus everyday and having to plead my humanity, essentially, to other students. I feel like an outsider constantly. I don’t feel like at my own school I can solely focus on being a student," one woman explained.

"It feels isolating. It feels horrible. It feels like there is a lot of pressure, a lot of weight. It feels like I don't belong. It feels unwelcoming and hostile,” another woman shared.

The students expanded upon their feelings of isolation, and feeling like they have to represent their entire community.

“It’s a constant burden of pressure. I’m constantly policing myself, just being aware of what I say and how it can be interpreted because I essentially am the representation of the black community.”

One woman felt she had been automatically characterized as an "angry black woman" after she disagreed with the views of a particular professor and openly vocalized her thoughts.

"The fact that I was a black woman played a lot into why people stopped listening to me. I felt like if there were maybe more black women in the class, maybe just five of us, people could have seen more of a variation in our responses to what was going on in class and what I felt like was sexism in the classroom."

Lately, students of color have been using the internet to raise awareness about diversity issues on their campuses. Just a few months ago, undergraduate students at UCLA released a video pointing out the fact that UCLA has more NCAA championships than black male freshmen. While students at the University of Michigan ignited a viral conversation on Twitter titled #BBUM (being black at the University of Michigan.)

At
the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, the Black Student Union
organized a protest on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. A new wave of
activism has risen on college campuses in response to racist episodes
and a general feeling of isolation among black students. The Michigan
group spearheaded a popular social media campaign and has received
inquiries from black student groups nationwide who want to pursue
similar efforts. Allison Farrand/The Michigan Daily

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A brochure for the University of Michigan features a vision of multicultural harmony, with a group of students from different racial backgrounds sitting on a verdant lawn, smiling and conversing.

The scene at the undergraduate library one night last week was quite different, as hundreds of students and faculty members gathered for a 12-hour “speak out” to address racial tensions brought to the fore by a party that had been planned for November and then canceled amid protests. The fraternity hosting the party, whose members are mostly Asian and white, had invited “rappers, twerkers, gangsters” and others “back to da hood again.”

Beyond the immediate provocation of the party, a sharp decline in black undergraduate enrollment — to 4.6 percent of the student body in 2013 from 6.2 percent in 2009 — and a general feeling of isolation among black students on campus have prompted a new wave of student activism, including a social media campaign called “Being Black at the University of Michigan” (or, on Twitter. Members of the university’s Black Student Union have petitioned campus administrators to, among other things, increase enrollment of black students to 10 percent.

Similar episodes and tensions have unsettled colleges including Arizona State; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Mississippi; and Dartmouth.

In the news media and in popular culture, the notion persists that millennials — born after the overt racial debates and divisions that shaped their parents’ lives — are growing up in a colorblind society in which interracial friendships and marriages are commonplace and racism is largely a relic.

But interviews with dozens of students, professors and administrators at the University of Michigan and elsewhere indicate that the reality is far more complicated, and that racial tensions are playing out in new ways among young adults.

Some experts say the concept of being “postracial” can mean replicating some of the divisions and insensitivity of the past, perhaps more from ignorance than from animus. Others find offensive the idea of a society that strips away deeply personal beliefs surrounding self-identification.

“There’s this preconceived notion that our generation is postracial, but there’s these incidents that happen constantly that disprove that point,” said Zach Fields, a business major here, who is white. He attributed many high-profile incidents — including a number of fraternity parties nationwide that have used racist symbols, including watermelons and gang signs — to ignorance.

“I feel like they don’t mean to be so offensive,” Mr. Fields, 20, said of the party organizers. “It’s not a conscious racism. It’s subconscious.”

Tyrell Collier, 21, the speaker of the Black Student Union, who is majoring in sociology and Afro-American and African studies, said racial tensions on campus had been mounting for months.

“There was a very tense climate brewing all semester, and I think the party was just the peak,” he said. Mr. Collier added that his group, which spearheaded the popular social media campaign, had received inquiries from other black student groups around the country looking to use similar tactics.

“We’re clearly not postracial,” said Tiya A. Miles, chairwoman of the department of Afro-American and African studies. “Sometimes I wonder if having a black president lets people feel like that gives them cover. It absolves people of being prejudiced.”

The number of complaints related to race and ethnicity filed against colleges and universities rose to 860 in 2013 from 555 in 2009, according to the Office for Civil Rights at the federal Education Department. Some experts believe that the increase reflects, at least in part, the role of social media in creating and then publicizing episodes.

Students nationwide responded to a reporter’s request on Facebook and Twitter for stories about racial issues on college campuses. The experiences they described ranged from overt racism to more subtle forms of insensitivity.

Charles Tkacik, a freshman at Johnson & Wales University in North Miami, Fla., who is white, said in an email that while public demonstrations of racism were rare at his university, “there is a deep layer of contempt and hatred among a percentage of students toward other races.”

Jordan Taylor, a black student at the State University of New York at New Paltz, shared a photo of a “colored only” sign that had been placed on a water fountain in his freshman year.

A black student at Princeton said a racial epithet was once scrawled on his dorm room door. A Korean-American student at the University of Minnesota described being asked by her classmates if she “did massage” or “wore a kimono at home.”

Race is very much an open issue at the University of Michigan. In 2006, Michigan residents voted in favor of Proposition 2, which prohibited affirmative action based on race or ethnicity in admissions and hiring at public institutions. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the measure this year. These issues are playing out when the minority population is growing nationwide but shrinking on some college campuses.

“I think there is no question that Prop 2 has made it much more challenging for us,” Martha E. Pollack, the university provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, said of the affirmative action vote. “It was difficult to be the kind of community that we wanted to be even when we could use affirmative action.”

Alex Ngo, 21, who is majoring in communications, rejected the notion of colorblindness. “When I hear people say, ‘We’re all people, we’re all human, I don’t see color,’ to me that means, ‘I don’t see you, you don’t exist,’ ” he said. Mr. Ngo, who is Chinese and gay, said he had been subjected to racist and homophobic epithets.

Some students, like James Rice, 21, who is white, see being colorblind as a worthy goal in certain situations. If race is something “not taken into consideration in society in places like education and the workplace, I feel like it’s a really good goal,” Mr. Rice said.

But many others said that failing to account for the reality of race created an unrealistic view of the world.

Gurdit Suri, 19, a finance and international studies major who described himself as a “turban-wearing Sikh,” said he often felt judged by fellow students. “It doesn’t matter how many awards I can get, how many tests I can take, how many times I volunteer,” he said. “I am the other to a lot of people in this campus. People will make judgments about me, implicit or not.”

For many students, racial issues play out as they did for previous generations, as a constant attempt to bridge an often-subtle divide. Nikia Smith, a black freshman, said tensions could be woven into the fabric of daily life — for example, if a white student did not hold a door open for a black student who was about to walk through it. Maybe the student was just in a rush, Ms. Smith, 19, said. But “in my mind, I could be thinking, ‘Oh, it’s because I’m black.’ ”

David J. Leonard, a professor in the department of critical culture, gender and race studies at Washington State University, said young people often viewed racism as something associated with extremist groups like the Ku Klux Klan. “People who don’t see themselves like this think: ‘We can poke fun. We can engage in stereotypes,’ ” Dr. Leonard said. “Racism gets reduced to intent, as if intent is all that matters.”

While black undergraduate enrollment at the University of Michigan has ebbed and flowed over the years, peaking in the 1990s, James J. Duderstadt, a professor of science and engineering who was president of the university from 1988 to 1996, said it was difficult to determine whether racism on campus had, in fact, increased.

He said he believed that the recent spate of activism on diversity was being propelled by two issues: a lack of state funding for public institutions that has led colleges to admit more out-of-state students, who tend to be more affluent and less diverse, and challenges to affirmative action laws in states like Michigan and California.

Some experts say that, rather than being uniformly postracial, young people often see different worlds when they contemplate race — just as their parents did. Blanca E. Vega, a doctoral candidate at Teachers College at Columbia University, who is writing her dissertation on racial conflicts in higher education, said white people tended to see much more progress on race.

“There’s a mismatch in the perceptions of race and racism,” Ms. Vega said, “depending on who you speak with and depending on their racial background.”

Malcolm X (1925-1965)

"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against."

W.E.B. DuBois (1868-1963)

"There is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know."

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)

"Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent. "

James Baldwin (1924-1987)

"Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society."

Aimé Césaire (1913-2008)

"A civilization that proves incapable of solving the problems it creates is a decadent civilization. A civilization that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a stricken civilization. A civilization that uses its principles for trickery and deceit is a dying civilization."

Nina Simone (1933-2003)

"There's no other purpose, so far as I'm concerned, for us except to reflect the times, the situations around us and the things we're able to say through our art, the things that millions of people can't say. I think that's the function of an artist and, of course, those of us who are lucky leave a legacy so that when we're dead, we also live on. That's people like Billie Holiday and I hope that I will be that lucky, but meanwhile, the function, so far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times, whatever that might be."

Amilcar Cabral (1924-1973)

"Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone's head. They are fighting to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children ....Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories..." .

Angela Davis (b. 1944)

"The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what's that? The freedom to starve?”

Duke Ellington (1899-1974)

“Jazz is the freest musical expression we have yet seen. To me, then, jazz means simply freedom of musical speech! And it is precisely because of this freedom that so many varied forms of jazz exist. The important thing to remember, however, is that not one of these forms represents jazz by itself. Jazz simply means the freedom to have many forms.”

Amiri Baraka (1934-2014)

"Thought is more important than art. To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is."

Frederick Douglass (1817-1895)

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” --August 3, 1857

Cecil Taylor (b. 1929)

“Musical categories don’t mean anything unless we talk about the actual specific acts that people go through to make music, how one speaks, dances, dresses, moves, thinks, makes love...all these things. We begin with a sound and then say, what is the function of that sound, what is determining the procedures of that sound? Then we can talk about how it motivates or regenerates itself, and that’s where we have tradition.”

Ella Baker (1903-1986)

"Strong people don't need strong leaders"

Paul Robeson (1898-1976)

"The artist must take sides, He must elect to fight for freedom or slavery, I had no alternative"

John Coltrane (1926-1967)

"I want to be a force for real good. In other words, I know there are bad forces. I know that there are forces out here that bring suffering to others and misery to the world, but I want to be the opposite force. I want to be the force which is truly for good."

Miles Davis (1926-1991)

"Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around."

C.L.R. James (1901-1989)

"All development takes place by means of self-movement, not organization by external forces. It is within the organism itself (i.e. within the society) that there must be realized new motives, new possibilities."

Frantz Fanon (1925-1961)

"Now, political education means opening minds, awakening them, and allowing the birth of their intelligence as [Aime] Cesaire said, it is 'to invent souls.' To educate the masses politically does not mean, cannot mean, making a political speech. What it means is to try, relentlessly and passionately, to teach the masses that everything depends on them."

Edward Said (1935-2003)

“I take criticism so seriously as to believe that, even in the midst of a battle in which one is unmistakably on one side against another, there should be criticism, because there must be critical consciousness if there are to be issues, problems, values, even lives to be fought for."

Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)

“The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned. There must be pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.”

Susan Sontag (1933-2004)

"Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not﻿ waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager."

Editor's Bio

Kofi Natambu, editor of The Panopticon Review, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He is the author of a biography MALCOLM X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: THE MELODY NEVER STOPS (Past Tents Press) and INTERVALS (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of SOLID GROUND: A NEW WORLD JOURNAL, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology NOSTALGIA FOR THE PRESENT (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.